About 495 allied health professionals who are yet to be employed after completing their studies and national service on Monday picketed the Ministry of Health (MoH) to register their displeasure at the Ministry’s inability to employ them.

They are made up of laboratory technicians, medical recorders, disease control officers, opticians and health information officers.

According to them, they were unhappy that the bonded diploma nurses numbering about 4000 were last Thursday given financial clearance by the Finance ministry for them to be employed after their sustained agitation.

Their leader, Solomon Yeboah argues that they have been negotiating with the ministry for the past nine months and their colleagues who just completed their national service were last Thursday cleared.

“Infact we have lost hope and trust in the Ministry. After several negotiations with the Ministry for nine months, the Ministry released financial clearance for over 4000 last Thursday and just our small population, 495 the Ministry did not add us. We are bonded as well and even that of our colleagues who were given the financial clearance, we are in the same group with those [nurses] who did the picketing [sic]”.

“We made our investigations last Friday and it was surprising that they finished with their service just last month [sic].”

According to the allied health professionals, “As citizens and not spectators, we can only fight for our share in the employment of health professionals after realizing we were not part of the just-released financial clearance for over 4,800 clinicians with whom we completed and/or served with in the same year frame.”

“We are aware the government is in a hurry. We, therefore, don’t want our issue to be an oversight, hence we are employing the now efficacious way – picketing – to register our displeasure and demand our right,” they said.